


Everyone Has a Scott McCall Story

by LuthienKenobi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Character Study, Episode: s05e18 Maid of Gévaudan, Gen, POV Outsider, Post-Season/Series 06, Scott McCall (Teen Wolf)-centric, the layers go deep, this is an in-universe article inside an in-universe article
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29904717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienKenobi/pseuds/LuthienKenobi
Summary: Eyewitness accounts are often extremely unreliable, and emotionally charged events can affect memory retention. No one who was there that night will be able to forget what happened, but the things we individually remember might be very, very different.However, this story is mine and mine alone. It’s the events that occurred in the library as I remember them.And I remember them vividly.(or, Sydney writes an article in 2012. In 2013, she publishes it.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Everyone Has a Scott McCall Story

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Teen Wolf Legacy's Top Dogs Week, Day 1—Character Study.
> 
> Beta'd by the ever lovely [momentofmemory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentofmemory)!

**Everyone Has a Scott McCall Story**

By Sydney Andrews

Published in the Beacon Hills High Journal on October 11, 2013

_ Author's Note: I originally wrote this article last year, not long after the disastrous charity game that nearly ended in a televised massacre. It was my way to decompress and process, I suppose. I never really intended to do anything with it, as I wasn’t sure all parties involved would be comfortable with its publication. However, after the events of the past few months and the truths that have finally come to light, I’ve decided that some stories need to be told. _

_ We’ve been comfortable with a culture of silence for too long, and it’s time to speak out. I need to speak out.  _

_ Specifically, I need to show my appreciation. _

___________________________

We need to talk about the game.

I’m sure you all know which game I’m talking about.

As most of you probably remember, there were a few surprises, and at least one unexpected celebrity appearance. 

Maybe it was the TV cameras. 

I’m sure by now everyone knows what happened. Either you were there, and witnessed it first hand, or you knew someone who was. And even if you don’t know anyone who was at the school last Friday night, chances are you’ve heard the story, or at least a version of it. High schoolers love to gossip, and a school like Beacon Hills High has more fuel for that sort of thing than most. 

Just ask anyone who’s been here for more than a semester. I’m only a Sophomore, and I could tell you some stories. 

Not that I would, of course. BHHS tends to have this unspoken rule that the really weird stuff only gets talked about in private—when you’re in public, it’s better to pretend that it isn’t happening. That there aren’t a whole host of issues entirely unique to our school.

Today, I’d like to change that. I want to tell my story.

Except, it really isn’t my story at all.

When the attack occurred, I was with a group of students that immediately rushed into the school. After all, that’s what they teach us in the lockdown drills, right? Get out of the open, lock the doors, stay low and quiet until a teacher or a police officer comes to get you.

So about twenty of us ran to the library, and that’s what we did. We didn’t know what, exactly, was chasing us, but we had all heard the screams. Heard noises that weren’t human, but also didn’t sound like any animal that I’d ever heard of before, either. 

The lockdown drills don’t really prepare you for that.

I can’t speak for anyone else that night, but I, at least, was terrified. We crouched in rows against the bookshelves, legs tucked up to make ourselves as small as possible, trying to hide in the shadows. I didn’t even know the person sitting next me, or at least I didn’t at the time—I learned later that her name was Abby, and she was a freshman at Devenford Prep. We’ve become friends since the incident, and she’s told me that, quite understandably, she never plans on attending another away game again.

But at the time, neither of us were thinking that far in the future. We were huddled in place, backs pressed against wooden shelves, listening to the sporadic crashes and screams echoing from somewhere else in the school. 

Sometimes there was silence. But that was even worse, as we no longer had even the slightest idea about what was going on. Had the monster run off, was it safe to leave? Would it come crashing in at any moment, ready to tear us apart?

Or were we the only ones in the school left alive, and no one would be coming to get us?

I don’t know how long we sat there, terrified. Not sure if we were even doing the right thing. I heard a couple students praying, and I’m not really religious, but I thought about joining them.

We all jumped when the doors slammed open. But it wasn’t armed deputies or even the monster who stumbled into the center of the library.

It was Scott McCall.

The first thing I immediately felt was relief, and others later told me they felt the same. But some of the students I spoke to over the course of researching and writing this article—students who were also in the library and experienced all the same things as I did—told me that their first thoughts were more akin to ‘oh god, you have got to be kidding me.’

More often than not, multiple expletives were included in that sentiment.

And the thing is, even though that wasn’t my personal, subjective experience, I get it.

If you’ve been a student at Beacon Hills High for even a short length of time, then you’ve heard the rumors. Maybe even spread a few yourself.

For those of you reading this who aren’t students here, or who have just been really successful at keeping to yourself and not getting involved, maybe I should start at the beginning. 

Scott McCall is a senior here at Beacon Hills High. He’s in my AP Biology class (don’t ask why I’m a sophomore in AP Bio—trust me, I’m well aware it was a bad idea), and in class he’s quiet and soft spoken. He doesn’t speak up often, but when he does, it’s because he’s confident that he knows the answer.

And he’s usually right. 

You may also know Scott as the captain of the lacrosse team, a position that he earned when he was only a sophomore. Since then, he’s led the team to multiple state championships, and is known by his fellow players as an accomplished leader and a spectacular athlete. I’ve personally seen him pull off feats of athleticism on the field that barely seem like they’re humanly possible.

But we’ll get to that later. 

If you don’t know Scott from class or from lacrosse, then you’re probably familiar with one of the many rumors and anecdotes that tend to spread like wildfire about Scott McCall and the diverse group of students that he surrounds himself with.

After all, everyone has a Scott McCall story. 

I had my own, even before the events of this past week.

During the infectious disease outbreak that occurred during the PSATs last year, I was one of the first students to fall ill, actually falling out of my chair and passing out during the exam.

I suspect this was in part due to the fact that I was up nearly the entire previous night studying, but whatever the reason I was one of the most severely affected of the students in attendance that day. We had all been told to stay exactly where the CDC put us, which for me was a quarantine tent, tended by bustling and business-like doctors dressed head to toe in hazmat suits. 

That didn’t stop Scott from coming to visit me in the quarantine tent, like I didn't have some unknown infection spreading rapidly up my arm. He told me everything was going to be okay, and he looked like he believed it. 

I believed him, too. 

There’s other stories, if you know the right people to ask. When I was researching for this article, I spoke to a Senior who told me that Scott once rescued his little brother and sister from some sort of wild animal in the woods. Another who talked about Scott breaking up fights that nobody else could seem to stop. 

And then there’s the even odder tales—the legends. The old wives tales, if you will, of Beacon Hills High. Things that upperclassmen swear by, and pass on to new students in the form of cryptic statements, and whispered, matter-of-fact advice. Things like:

‘If Scott McCall and his friends aren’t in class, you might want to see if your parents will call you out sick, too. If they’re out for multiple days, consider a vacation.’

‘If they tell you to do something—especially if it seems urgent—you do it.’

And 

‘If something weird’s going on, or you feel unsafe, call Scott McCall.’

I’d heard variations of these since the first day of classes my Freshman year, and I didn’t question them. I never thought to question them, because that’s just not something that people did. Some things just were, and it was better—maybe even safer for everyone involved—if you didn’t examine them too closely. 

And that brings us back to last week’s disastrous lacrosse game.

This is, of course, only my very personal and subjective experience of the night’s events. Others have their own stories, and I don’t doubt that every single one of the people who were hiding in the library with me would tell their own, slightly different version. 

After all, eyewitness accounts of any event are often extremely unreliable, and add to that the way adrenaline and emotionally charged events can affect memory retention… No one who was there that night will be able to forget what happened, but I understand that the things we individually remember might be very, very different.

However, this story is mine and mine alone. It’s the events that occurred in the library as I remember them.

And I remember them vividly.

I remember huddling against the bookshelves, straining to hear anything that might tell us what was going on outside this room, when the doors suddenly burst open. It wasn’t loud, not exactly, but it was sudden and unexpected, in a way that nearly made me jump out of my skin.

All the rumors, all the stories passed down from upperclassmen to new students, said that if you’re in trouble, if something bad is happening, then Scott McCall can help.

Except when he stumbled into the room, breathing hard and leaning heavily against a table, eyes closed in exhaustion and relief, he already looked like he had lost several dozen fights. Blood was streaming down one side of his face, and his uniform and pads were torn and stained. 

He wasn’t here to rescue us—he didn’t even know we were there. He was just another high school kid running away from a monster. 

A horror movie clich é . 

He caught his breath and straightened up, forcing himself to support all of his own weight, and it didn’t look like a pleasant process. It wasn’t long afterwards that he noticed we were there.

That he noticed just  _ how many _ of us were there.

It would be presumptuous of me to pretend to know what he was thinking. I haven’t asked him about it, or asked one of the many people who knows him much better than I do. But despite that, I think I might have a guess.

I’ve spoken to several other students who were at the school that night—ones who weren’t in the library, and who saw very different parts of the night’s chaos—and I’ve lost count of the number of people who told me specifically that they saw Scott McCall. Facing down the monster. Deliberately leading it away from groups of people. One girl told me that he bodily dragged her out of the hallway when she had frozen up, and held the door so she could escape.

Even when she was safely outside the building, she could hear him scream.

I don’t know how many times he fought that thing before he stumbled into the library, but I do know that he had been protecting people all night. That he was—at least to some extent—injured as a direct result of trying to help people.

And then he stumbled into the library, probably hoping to be able to catch his breath for just a few moments before the monster caught up with him again. 

Except we were there. And if that thing was chasing him, then that would mean that he led it straight to us.

We all knew it too, and the tension in the room in that moment was like nothing I had ever felt before. A spike of wordless fear and uncertainty that I could see echoed in everyone else around me.

Was he going to run?

Would he leave us?

Were we all going to die?

Honestly, I wouldn’t blame him if he had run. If he had taken off to find a less occupied hiding place, and just hoped that the thing didn’t find us instead when it was searching for him. It would probably even be the logical thing to do, since he didn’t exactly look like he was ready for another fight.

Instead, he looked around at all of us, cowering against the bookshelves, and he told us to go upstairs.

I grabbed Abby’s hand and ran for the stairs, and everyone else followed. 

I was barely settled, back pressed against one of the book carts, when we heard it coming. Heavy thudding footsteps. Growling. And it was getting louder. 

There was no longer any doubt as to whether or not it was going to find us.

The monster burst in through the library, and Scott stood his ground. It growled at him, deep and guttural and menacing. And Scott—

His eyes glowed red. And he roared back.

I honestly didn’t think too much of it at the time—it was just another insane, impossible thing to add to the list of crazy that was already a mile long. And even now, looking back, I couldn’t tell you what it meant. What it means. 

What I can tell you is that I wasn’t afraid—or at least not of Scott. He wasn’t terrifying like the monster was: lurching and towering, all inky-black muscle and sinew. Instead, what I saw was awe-inspiring. Comforting, even.

This was the most terrifying moment of my life, but someone had our back, and he was something more than merely human.

I don’t know how long the fight went on for, but even as an outside observer, it seemed interminable. Scott was literally fighting tooth and nail, but for every hit he landed, the thing would throw him into a table or a bookcase, or simply just halfway across the room.

There were so many moments where I was so sure this was the end. That the monster had killed Scott right there in front of us, and that it would stalk upstairs and tear us all apart next. But each time, impossibly, he kept getting back up. He kept physically placing himself between the monster and the stairs, blocking its path up to the rest of us.

I and the others who were in the library are alive today because he refused to give up.

Eventually, Scott’s friends arrived, and together they were able to chase it away. It ran off into the night and then—

Then the school was silent.

We had survived.

Beacon Hills has had so many tragedies over the years. The high school itself has had no shortage of them, even just since I’ve been in attendance here. But that night wasn’t one of them.

The attack at the game should’ve been yet another massacre—a somber but fundamentally bizarre footnote in national newspapers. And instead, it wasn’t.

And I believe that’s entirely due to Scott McCall.

We’ve all heard the stories—rumors passed from person to person until they’re little more than legends—but I can’t speak to their veracity. 

I can only tell you mine.

**Author's Note:**

> I will admit, this is absurdly high concept. However, my love for outsider POV and in-universe documentation (and Scott McCall!) knows no bounds.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and feel free to come scream at me on [tumblr](https://daughterofluthien.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
